


Linear B and Cookies n' Creme

by stanford_era



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dreams, M/M, Magic, Pining, Secrets, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 12:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stanford_era/pseuds/stanford_era
Summary: In the three or four minutes Dean spends freeing him from the hex, Sam lives four years. He wakes up haunted, a lingering sadness in his smile.(Dean’s going to kill whoever put it there.)





	Linear B and Cookies n' Creme

Dean listens to Sam, hard as he can. They’ve gotten calls about a renegade teenage witch, ripping magic off other species like a kid pilfering candy from a convenience store, and Sam’s got notes and hypotheses and full-on spreadsheets. Though it’s a herculean task, Dean strives not to zone out through a highly technical lecture on the genetic structures of hemp and lavender...

They corner her easily enough, but not before she squeezes a damn hex bag and lobs it on the floor. It falls with a disproportionate crash and emits a circle of blue light, spreading out, out, until it meets a target.

Sam falls.

The light disappears on touching his feet, and Dean promptly takes the witch down before rushing to Sam. There’s no wound, far as Dean can see. Sam’s breathing easily, lips quirked in a subtle smile like he’s only asleep.

Exhaling in relief, Dean reaches for his lighter and sets to breaking the hex. The cloth of the bag catches easily, sending up a tall, thin flame of saturated blue, blinding and smokeless.

The bag burns too long. The fire refuses to die, and Sam starts stirring, whimpering like he’s in pain. Cursing, Dean starts looking for something flammable, oil, kerosene, anything to speed this up. He paces around the witch’s study, scanning the herbs and scrolls and carved trinkets, because if there’s anything he can do to save Sam from hurting he’ll do it.

“Dean.”

Dean thinks he misheard that, that breathy half-moan. He spins around just in time to see Sam’s whole face seize up in agony. Then he opens his eyes.

“What happened?” Sam asks, blinking. His voice is soft and husky; Dean recognizes that rasp from every early morning.

“You got knocked out.”

“When?”

Dean frowns. “Three, four minutes ago.”

“Oh.” Sam starts getting up only to pause, staring down at his left hand. Dean bends forward to examine it. It looks perfectly normal.

“What day is it?”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You hit your head pretty hard, huh? It’s Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?” Sam squints up at him. “It’s...” He swivels his head, surveying the musty room and its jam-packed shelves. “The teenage witch.”

“Right, yeah. I took care of her.”

Now Sam’s eyes alight on the hex bag, its cloth reduced to bright blue embers. “I was researching the effects of swapping lavender with fresh Russian sage.”

“Uh...” Dean screws up his forehead, sifting through that morning’s lecture. “Yeah. Yeah, that happened.”

Sam keeps on staring.

“You awake there?”

Slowly he shifts his gaze to his brother, eyes wide and lips slack with what Dean can only call sorrow.

His voice is still soft, nearly a whisper. “I’m fine.”

~

Sam’s _off_ the rest of the day.

Dean’s gotten good at watching his little brother, longer and more intensely than he rightfully should, and so he sees the shift in his movement. Sam’s a little slower, like he’s hesitating, struggling to calculate each move. His voice has gone flat.

“Hey,” Dean says once they’re on the road, “I still think something coulda gone wrong in your head...”

“I’m not concussed.”

“Really,” Dean says, deadpan. “No dizziness whatsoever.”

“None.”

“You’re not at all disoriented?”

Sam waits a couple beats too long. “There’s nothing plain bed rest is going to do for me, Dean.”

~

By the time they check in to their next fleabag motel, Sam hasn’t thrown up or had a seizure, so Dean figures they might be safe on the brain damage front. Sam stops for a second when he walks into their room, eyes flicking back and forth between the two beds, but then he shrugs to himself and settles in.

Dean wants to ask, but he can’t figure out what the hell his question is.

~

“Hey,” Dean says the next day, while he’s flipping through channels and Sam’s bent over his laptop. “What was in that hex bag?”

“Let me check...” It takes Sam longer than usual, but he scrolls up and finds his place in his notes. “I didn’t get all the ingredients, but presumably silver. Maybe some lamb parts. Assorted herbs, some in the form of an unusually concentrated essence.”

“What’s the effect?”

“It didn’t hurt much.” He glances up. “What’d it look like to you?”

“Like you were sleeping.”

Sam doesn’t reply, focusing on his computer as he types something up.

“You were smiling,” Dean adds a second later. “Like you had an inside joke.”

Sam’s face darkens before going curiously blank.

~

Their next case requires some background reading, a couple hours poking around libraries and the weirder corners of the internet. It can’t explain why Sam’s been on his laptop for twelve hours straight, tapping away like a man possessed.

Not literally.

Dean hopes.

“What’re you doing?”

“Adding to my research notes.”

Dean peeks at the screen and sees lines of a foreign language, something Latinate. “What kind of research?”

“I’m designing a process to date Gallo-Roman curse tablets.”

“You tried asking them out?”

Sam tenses like he’s about to laugh, only to settle for a smile.

“So... you’ve just been working on curse tablets?” Dean tilts his head. “Do we even need a curse tablet?”

“No, I’ve also been looking at magic coins, and the relative effectiveness of different chicken bones, and djinn tattoo design.” Before Dean can ask why, he answers, “Personal interest.”

Sam switches to another tab, covered with boxy pictographs.

Dean’s eyes widen. “Are those hieroglyphics?”

“Linear B. It’s an early Greek alphabet.”

“You can read what that says?”

“I picked it up.”

Dean grunts in awe. “When?”

“Over a couple years.”

He’s not forthcoming with more information, so Dean shrugs. “I’m going to bed.”

~

Dean’s fast asleep when he hears it.

“Please.”

Dean’s eyes fly open in an instant, because that’s not a sound he can ignore, so soft and broken he thinks he must have dreamt it.

“Please,” Sam breathes again, still sleeping.

Dean waits, barely breathing himself, and more words come spilling out of Sam’s mouth, “please” and “just” and “no.”

Sam’s face contorts with pain, shadows wrinkling across that giant forehead, stirring an ache in Dean’s heart that he’s never going to ever admit to.

~

“That hex bag had djinn magic, didn’t it?” Dean throws it down like a challenge over breakfast at the nearest greasy diner.

Sam stares at him from the opposite booth, his poker face carefully composed. “Yeah.”

“What kind of djinn are we talking about here?” he demands. “The nightmare kind?”

“No, the normal kind. Happy hallucination world.”

“No torture dreams?”

“Not in themselves, no.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“I wasn’t in a cage, Dean,” Sam retorts with a flare of annoyance that he immediately shuts down again. “No fires, no yellow-eyed demons, not a single hint of an apocalypse. It was just us, driving around. Hunting whatever we wanted.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he replies with a jaunty tip of the head and a smile he can’t possibly mean. “That’s what all the notes are for, I’m writing down stuff I learned there. Some of it was accurate, though some of it turned out to be...” He shakes his head. “Anyway, the lack of mass threats to humanity should have been the first tip-off that it wasn’t real.”

Dean frowns, because they don’t get embroiled in the end of the world _that_ often. “How long were you down there for?”

Sam looks down at his pancakes. “A couple years.”

“ _A couple years_?”

“Four years, it was a good hex bag. Pass the syrup?”

~

Four years.

There’s four years now missing from Sam’s world. Four years that _Dean_ just missed, all locked away on their parallel timeline.

Sam learns to cover better, to slow his frenzied typing, to fake the slick banter that came naturally a couple weeks back. Too bad Dean’s learned better than to believe any of it.

He can’t ignore the gap growing between them. A literal gap as Sam for the first time respects his personal space, standing an appropriate yet weirdly uncomfortable distance away. A metaphorical gap, made from choices and stutters and pauses where Dean least expects them...

“Here’s your daily dose of diabetes.” Sam gets back into the Impala, dropping a bag full of drugstore goodies between them.

“You got Hershey’s _Cookies 'n' Creme_? What, plain chocolate’s not good enough for us now...”

Dean trails off, because Sam’s squinting at the bar like he doesn’t know how it got there.

“I...” He lifts his face, eyes wide and _lost_. “You like this. Trust me.”

He doesn’t seem to trust himself.

Dean gingerly takes the bar, tears the wrapper, crinkles it down and bites the edge of the candy. He glowers while swirling it around his mouth, stretching out the suspense before declaring, “This is not the worst thing I’ve ever had.”

He breaks into a grin. Sam doesn’t. Dean takes another bite with exaggerated gusto, and with that Sam lets out a long exhale and sinks back into his seat, head turned away from Dean.

Still, Dean catches his inexplicable wistful smile.

That smile’s driving Dean crazy, working its way into his dreams, because Sam’s limping around this world like he left half of himself behind. Dean needs to know why that look's glued to Sam's face.

He’ll happily kill whoever put it there.

~

Sam stops meeting Dean’s eyes.

Maybe Dean’s being melodramatic about it, maybe they spent too long gazing at each other before and Sam’s only dragging them back to propriety, but Dean can’t help feeling the loss. Dean tries not to freak him out. He tones down the blatantness of his own staring.

Then Sam starts watching him.

He only does it when he thinks Dean won’t notice; little does he know that Dean’s perfected the art of fixating on Sam without anyone else knowing. There’s a heat in Sam’s eyes that Dean doesn’t recognize, intent and fervid, like he wants to lunge and never let go.

Whenever Dean turns to face him, he swaps it for his usual melancholy.

Dean resolves not to pry, instead hoping that Sam’s moodiness will magically solve itself. He holds his tongue and gives Sam the space he so clearly wants and shuts down his own nagging questions. His approach works, right up until Sam gets non-literally possessed by the spirit of a debauched frat boy.

A hunt leads them to Vegas, to a witch tricking tourists into gambling away years of their life. They shack up in a tacky motel off the Strip, stuck with nothing but flimsy leads and secondhand smoke. The first day they split up to interview various victims, and when Dean trudges back to the room that night, exhausted from a long day’s work, he can’t even go inside. Not when there are groans, no, _moans_ drifting through the walls from Sam and a girl.

No, two girls.

Defaulting to autopilot, Dean turns right back around and strides to the nearest bar.

He’s glad, he tells the bartender, a pretty blonde who diligently attends to his glass. He’s glad Sammy’s moving on from whatever it was that had his panties in a twist. And if Sammy’s idea of moving on involves random girls off the streets of Vegas whose interest may or may not be limited to mere monetary compensation, then so be it. It’s his life. Dean’ll just have to accept that, won’t he?

“You seem like a nice kid,” the bartender tells him after cutting him off a quarter past two. “Why don’t you just go make up with your boyfriend?”

Dean wakes up in their room with a pounding headache, soothed slightly by the fact that Sam mocks him with a near-genuine grin. With minimal fanfare they pack up and head out to the Strip, to a posh hotel casino where their target allegedly deals every night. Dean strolls around, throws a couple dollars away on the slot machines and generally explores their surroundings. Sam takes a more direct approach, engaging the daytime dealers in conversation as he leans back in a plush red chair and plays poker. In a well-fitted suit with the cards fanned out in his hand, he’s the picture of gentlemanly ease, if not for the way he holds his left hand to his chin, thumb curled under his index and middle fingers and then poking up again, gently pressing the place where a ring could go.

Dean doesn’t bother coming home until morning, but even that’s too early. A tittering brunette leaves their motel room and passes him in the parking lot, tugging her collar up to hide her hickeys, and Dean halts in his tracks, leaning against the Impala for support. By the time he makes it inside Sam’s nodded off, his sheets stinking of perfume.

The next night, Dean goes out for a drink and comes back at a reasonable hour. Sam goes out at the same time, presumably for sex. He comes back second at what’s still a fairly reasonable hour by Vegas standards, but his clothes are rumpled and stained with lipstick.

The second he locks the door Dean loses it. “What’s going on here?”

He stops in place. “What are you talking about?”

“You, acting like a bachelorette on her last weekend. And don’t tell me nothing’s up.”

Sam crumples up his forehead. “Are _you_ lecturing me on healthy coping methods?”

“Yes. No. Look,” Dean says, “we’re in Vegas, sure, but you don’t have to catch every STD in the city.”

Wincing at the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, he gets ready for Sam to lash out or roll his eyes and disengage entirely. Instead he’s rewarded with a puzzled frown.

“Why do you _care_?”

The honest answer flashes through Dean’s head. He chucks it out the window. “Because that hex screwed with your head, and I know how.”

Sam’s spine goes rigid. “Really.”

“Really.”

“And what,” he ekes out, “do you think happened?”

“You saw your happiest life, right, your wildest dreams come true? That’s how djinn magic works, it gives you your own personalized heaven,” Dean says, bottled-up words all spilling out. “So you kept hunting with me, but I bet you also got your happy ever after. You got someone who was a great match and, you know, didn’t die on you for a change.”

Sam’s jaw tenses up. His eyes are fixed on Dean’s.

“You got your romcom, didn’t you? Maybe even marriage.”

Sam’s coiled tight, not even breathing.

“Your perfect girl.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snaps.

“No, Sam, I do. There’s a perfect girl out there for you, you know who it is, but you’re banging half of Vegas instead of chasing what you want!”

“Because what I want doesn’t exist,” he retorts bitterly, “and isn’t something I can have, and I was an _idiot_ for thinking it was real.”

There’s a flash of heat, because Sam’s many things but “idiot”’s not one of them, not the way Sam says it, all serrated edges laced with self-loathing. “So she’s dead. Who is it?”

“For god’s sake,” Sam mutters, turning to stalk back out.

“Look, I’ll go out and resurrect her right now, you just have to tell me. Jessica? Madison?”

Sam stops, door half-open. “Bruce.”

He slams the door behind him.

~

Dean drags himself to the diner in the morning. Sam’s hunched over at the end of the counter.

“This spot open?”

Sam nods.

Dean flashes a winning smile at the waitress and places his order before snapping back towards him. “So. Bruce.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. There’s a challenge under the light tone, and Dean nearly takes the bait, because how the hell does Sam’s heaven involve a Prince Charming when he never showed the slightest interest in guys, far as Dean could see?

It occurs to Dean that he’s a Grade A hypocrite.

“What was he like? This Bruce.”

Sam sips his coffee and swallows too hard. “Funny as hell. Smart, though prone to acting before thinking.” His lip quirks. “Pretty, too.”

Dean nearly asks, _more than you_?

“You were right.” Sam tears his stare from the vintage movie posters on the wall to glance at Dean. “I did marry him.”

“Okay,” Dean says, keeping his smile steady, “okay. He was fine with you running around on hunts?”

Sam takes an overly large bite to stall. “He trusted you to put my life before yours.”

“Smart man,” Dean observes, unsubtly pilfering a sausage from Sam’s plate. “You sure you can’t end up with him in the real world? You’re really sure?”

“Yeah.” Sam pushes his eggs around the plate with his fork. “The fact that I did should’ve told me it was a dream.”

~

Dean keeps watching Sam.

In Sam’s waking hours, his melancholy softens to acceptance. He smiles again, proper grins and smirks that reach his eyes, and he’s mostly knocked it off with the nostalgic sighing. He looks straight at Dean without flinching. He leans in close enough to steal Dean’s breath away. If Dean wanted, he could believe his baby brother’s all back again.

But it’s been months and Dean still wakes up in the middle of the night because Sam’s gasping in his sleep. Tonight he’s almost sobbing, chanting “please” and “just” and “stay” and “no” and “Dean.”

“Sam. Sam!”

“What?” he murmurs, blinking groggily at Dean, rubbing the tears off his face without seeming to notice they're there.

“Look, Sammy, I gotta ask,” he says, and then proceeds to run one last debate in his head over whether he’s really _gotta_ ask or if there’s still some other way out. “In the other timeline, did _I_ ever hurt you _?”_

That startles a glare out of him. “No, I didn’t get tortured. Why are you still hung up on this?”

“Because you’re still hung up on it.” Dean sits up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed to face Sam head-on. “You just had a nightmare.” Sam starts to interrupt, but Dean barrels on: “You were crying, and you said _my_ name.”

Sam pauses _again_ , but then he pushes himself up too and turns towards Dean, leaning forward into the gap between their beds. “It’s not what you think.”

“Isn’t it?” Dean bites out. “Maybe you had your happy ever after, and I still got in the way. Maybe I pulled you off to hunts, maybe Bruce and I didn’t get along...”

“ _That_ wasn’t a problem,” Sam mutters.

“There is a problem here, and I’m tied up in it somehow. Don’t tell me I’m not,” he warns, raising a hand. “You’ve just gotta tell me how.”

Sam gives a jittery shake of the head. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do. Otherwise, I don’t have a shot in hell of fixing it.” 

“It’s not your problem,” Sam counters, voice rising. “It’s mine. This is on _me_.”

“No, Sam...”

“It brought up all sorts of stuff I’ve been holding back since I was a kid, Dean. It’s my problem,” he says, voice cracking, eyes glossing over again. “It’s not yours.”

“How?” Dean protests, throwing up his hands. “You can have your husband, Sam. There’s loads of men out there who’d love you, and I’d kill anyone who gave you trouble about it.”

“I don’t just want _any_ guy,” he scoffs, face twisted in a near-hysterical scowl.

“Then tell me who the hell you do want, Sammy, because this isn’t working!”

“You.”

Dean almost misses it. Sam said it so low and quiet, looking down at Dean’s feet.

“Sorry, what?”

“You,” Sam repeats, forcing it out of his lungs, slowly looking back up. “There, I said it. Must be the demon blood, ‘cause my idea of heaven should damn me to hell...”

He breaks off, eyes squeezed shut as his whole frame trembles, and Dean sits in stunned silence.

“I don’t think it’s the demon blood,” he finally ventures. “But what about... What about Bruce?” 

“We faked our identities for the marriage license,” Sam admits, a quiver in his voice.

“And I was Bruce?”

“Yeah.”

They sit in the quiet.

“Could be worse,” Dean comments. “I could’ve been named Beauregard. Or Kemp.”

Sam lets out a wet chuckle.

“Could’ve been a lot worse.”

They sit in silence until eventually Sam shifts, pushing the hair out of his eyes. “See, this is why I said it was my problem.”

“What if I told you it’s not?” 

“You can’t fix this one, Dean,” he says, voice thick. “I can’t just pretend again, it doesn’t work if you don’t want me back..."

“What if I told you,” Dean slips in, sheets rustling as he gets out of bed and closes the gap, “that my made-up fake heaven would’ve looked the exact same way?”

Sammy stares up at him. Bending down, Dean lays a soft kiss on his mouth.

If he looks closely Sam looks the same as ever, the same as before, all his sorrow washed away. A subtle smile tugs at both their lips.

 


End file.
